I'm about to have some home-made PCBs sourced from 1980s electronics magazines but am concerned about the resulting quality and what I can do about it.
The PCB layouts have all been scanned from magazines at a high (1200 DPI) resolution, then meticulously touched up in Photoshop (spots and dust removed, imperfections fixed and all traces overlaid with 100% black instead of keeping the traces dark gray as they became when they were first scanned). But as they were obviously not computer generated but rather hand-drawn to begin with they're not of the same quality you'd get nowadays. So what's "good enough" in order to get a working PCB (without broken traces etc.)? I've also made reduced (300 DPI) versions from the original 1200 DPI scans and the resulting prints don't seem to differ that much.
Someone else is going to do the actual transfer and etching while I'm in charge of the scans and printing to transparencies using my laser printer at the highest possible output quality. He has access to a large UV light, press'n peel, etchant etc. so there are various options we could try out.
I've read that it's advisable to print two identical sheets and put them on top of each other to get close to 100% blocking of the UV light where the circuit traces are, but the guy who's doing the UV-lighting and etching tells me he's had bad experience with shadows using an additional sheet.
So is there anything else I can do apart from the above? Do I need to retouch further so that all jagged lines become 100% straight for instance or will the source material do? Anything else to keep in mind?
Below is one of the PCBs (reduced size) along with 100% of sections in 300 and 1200 DPI.
PCB overview (reduced size):
100% (1200 DPI) section of PCB (you might have to click on it here in order to actually view it in 100%):
100% (300 DPI) section of PCB (you might have to click on it here in order to actually view it in 100%):
The PCB layouts have all been scanned from magazines at a high (1200 DPI) resolution, then meticulously touched up in Photoshop (spots and dust removed, imperfections fixed and all traces overlaid with 100% black instead of keeping the traces dark gray as they became when they were first scanned). But as they were obviously not computer generated but rather hand-drawn to begin with they're not of the same quality you'd get nowadays. So what's "good enough" in order to get a working PCB (without broken traces etc.)? I've also made reduced (300 DPI) versions from the original 1200 DPI scans and the resulting prints don't seem to differ that much.
Someone else is going to do the actual transfer and etching while I'm in charge of the scans and printing to transparencies using my laser printer at the highest possible output quality. He has access to a large UV light, press'n peel, etchant etc. so there are various options we could try out.
I've read that it's advisable to print two identical sheets and put them on top of each other to get close to 100% blocking of the UV light where the circuit traces are, but the guy who's doing the UV-lighting and etching tells me he's had bad experience with shadows using an additional sheet.
So is there anything else I can do apart from the above? Do I need to retouch further so that all jagged lines become 100% straight for instance or will the source material do? Anything else to keep in mind?
Below is one of the PCBs (reduced size) along with 100% of sections in 300 and 1200 DPI.
PCB overview (reduced size):
100% (1200 DPI) section of PCB (you might have to click on it here in order to actually view it in 100%):
100% (300 DPI) section of PCB (you might have to click on it here in order to actually view it in 100%):
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